X restarted, then lost ability to log on as specific user.
System is Debian testing Xfce. Software installations strictly limited
to those available from the standard repositories -- no contrib, no
non-free software.
While I was using the system this morning (Icedove, ssh -X session
connected to another similar system, a couple of text editors, Zim and
KeePassX) I noticed a very uncharacteristic lagging response to keyboard
and mouse input, and then the screen flashed to tty1 followed quickly by
a display of the gdm greeting screen. I was unable to log on as the user
under whose account the X session crashed. I was able, however, to log
in as another user. (System is used only by me, but I always create a
second user account -- just in case.)
I looked in dmesg but didn't see anything that I thought was germane.
The following is the final portion of syslog which occurred exactly at
the time of the X crash. (I got this from the console as soon as I
realized that I couldn't log on to the account.)
-----------------------------------8<--------------------------------
Nov 2 09:17:01 emma /USR/SBIN/CRON[32193]: (root) CMD ( cd / &&
run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
Nov 2 09:17:43 emma kernel: [ 7345.072773] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0:
nouveau_channel_free: freeing fifo 1
Nov 2 09:17:43 emma gdm[1434]: WARNING: gdm_slave_xioerror_handler:
Fatal X error - Restarting :0
Nov 2 09:17:44 emma acpid: client 1438[0:0] has disconnected
Nov 2 09:17:44 emma acpid: client connected from 32217[0:0]
Nov 2 09:17:44 emma acpid: 1 client rule loaded
Nov 2 09:17:45 emma kernel: [ 7346.687742] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0:
Allocating FIFO number 1
Nov 2 09:17:45 emma kernel: [ 7346.689715] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0:
nouveau_channel_alloc: initialised FIFO 1
Nov 2 09:18:01 emma acpid: client 32217[0:0] has disconnected
-----------------------------------8<--------------------------------
From tty1 I can also see one error during the boot process. I don't
think it has anything to do with this problem, but I'm including it anyway:
udevd-work [376]: kernel-provided name 'uinput' and NAME= 'input/uinput'
disagree, please use SYMLINK+= or change the kernel to provide the
proper name
But a behavior I noticed when I went to switch back to the gdm greeter
may be pertinent. The greeter wasn't on tty7 where I expected it to be.
It was on tty8.
I have tested by rebooting and trying logging in under both normal user
accounts. If I log on to the secondary user account I can see that the
desktop session is on tty7. (I can switch back and forth between tty1
and tty7.) If I try (and fail, of course) to log on to the primary user
account, the screen goes blank and I wind up at the gdm greeter again.
At this point I can switch to tty1. When I try to go back to tty7 I just
see a black screen. If I go to tty8 I get the gdm greeter and am still
able to log on as the secondary user.
The .xsession-errors file for the failed user account contains only this.
------------------------------------8<-------------------------------
/etc/gdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...
xfdesktop [2132]: starting up
------------------------------------8<-------------------------------
It gets rewritten that way every time I try to log on under the account.
So if there was anything useful in there after the initial X session
crash, it disappeared the moment I first tried to log on to the account
after the X session crash.
The system seems to behave itself normally under the secondary user account.
Could someone suggest a troubleshooting approach? I'm stymied as to why
only the one user account seems affected. The only differences between
locations where configuration settings are kept in the two user
accounts' home directories that I can see (that are dated today) are the
.gconf and .gconfd directories. I'm tempted to delete them from the
ailing user account to see what happens, but I thought I'd better ask
before digging the hole any deeper.
;-)
Thanks,
Gilbert
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